Interview with Tundi Loftus

In this conversation, I speak to child behaviour specialist, academic, and PhD candidate in Psychology at Murdoch University, Tundi Loftus - whose work bridges research and real-world support for children and families. With a background in psychology and neurodevelopment, her research focuses on co-designing interventions to reduce anxiety in autistic children, while also exploring the deeper intersections of maternal mental health, environment, and child development. I was drawn to Tundi for Naturel Haus because her perspective so powerfully aligns with our ethos: a whole-person approach to wellbeing that honours the nervous system, environmental exposure, and the lived experience of women navigating fertility, motherhood, and healing... 

Can you take us through your personal journey to motherhood and how it shaped the way you now think about fertility and conscious living? 

My own journey to becoming a mother was a really challenging experience for me. I went to a private school and they pushed abstinence, and this idea that if you have sex, you will get pregnant. I understand there’s that balance of putting a little bit of fear into teenagers, but when I became a woman and I was ready to have a baby, I believed that narrative. I thought when you wanted to have a baby, you had sex and you would fall pregnant.

My first conception sort of reaffirmed that, but unfortunately that pregnancy ended in a loss. We lost our first baby, and then it ended up taking several years for me to conceive our child after that. Those were some of the hardest years I’ve experienced, that waiting, the constant “Am I or am I not pregnant?”, looking for a line, hoping that there’s some glimmer of a line on those tests. It just drives you mad, waiting to see if you’re pregnant and then realising that you’re not, month after month after month, and seeing all of these people falling pregnant around me.

I was so happy for my friends who were conceiving and having babies, of course, but it was constantly that feeling of, “Why not me?” I found that very challenging and very isolating as well, because I think that began almost ten years ago, and we just weren’t talking about it in the same way. And we’re still not talking about it enough.

Eventually, we started really looking at what we needed to do differently and focusing on what we were exposing ourselves to in the environment, and what we were consuming, not only physically consuming, but mentally consuming as well.

I used to be really into true crime and I’ve cut all of that out. I can’t imagine now even wanting to listen to those sorts of podcasts or read that content. I just find it devastating and heartbreaking. Really channelling in on our focus into what we consumed, what we were exposed to, keeping our phones away from our bodies, not holding a phone in your pocket, not wearing polyester underwear, not eating toxin-loaded food from the supermarket, not having Wi-Fi on all the time, all of these things that, in isolation, might not have a huge impact and that’s the problem from a scientific perspective - we often do study all of these things in isolation. So people might say your Wi-Fi is fine, your cell phone is fine, your microwave is fine, the chocolate that you’re eating is okay. But when we look at the total load that we’re putting on our bodies, that we’re putting on our whole system really, and expecting our bodies to be able to tolerate this level of toxin exposure all the time without any sort of reprieve or detox, it does have an accumulative effect. 

So we really just channelled our energy into cutting that out and being so much more conscious about our consumption. And that did end up leading to us being able to conceive a baby.

I’m really grateful for that whole process because it challenged how I thought about things and how I thought about what we choose to then expose our children to in the future. So I can look back on it now from that perspective and be really grateful that that journey took us to where we are now with our children, and that they get a better outcome as a result. But it was still so incredibly challenging. 

What is the work you do today, and what feels most important to you in supportin children and mothers?

My research work is currently focused on developing a yoga intervention for autistic children to help reduce anxiety, but I’m generally very passionate about supporting kids. I’m also moving more into the space of mothers’ mental health, because this is something that is seriously lacking, and we just don’t know enough about the experience of motherhood and how we can support mothers better. So my professional focus is really about bridging that gap between research and the practical support we’re able to provide to families in order to support the development of our next generation.

My journey within my career really started because I was interested in true crime, and my husband suggested that I look more into psychology. I was working in hospitality at the time, and he recommended pursuing a degree in psychology so that I could kind of shift that entertainment interest, I suppose, from true crime into understanding how the human brain works. So I was really interested in criminal psychology initially, and that’s what I studied when I first took my undergraduate degree.

I just happened to start working with children. I kind of fell into it while looking for work in the field, and I realised that a lot of the maladaptive behaviours we were seeing in these children, particularly in children with neurodevelopmental conditions, were antisocial behaviours that could land these kids in trouble in the future. I recognised that rather than trying to fix a broken justice system, it would be better to try to shape these children’s behaviour so that they don’t get there in the first place. And that’s why I really started focusing on working with children.

You’ve shared some unconventional personal experiments and perspectives online - can you tell us about your hair experiment and what it revealed?

I did share a hair experiment where I chose not to wash my hair for 6 months and it was something I just did on a whim as I had felt like I had been screaming into the void of mental health, social media and putting all this stuff out there about psychology and it just wasn’t gaining traction so I decided I would share a little more of my personality and the things that I do and my approaches and I had been toying with the idea of doing this no wash hair experiment for a while and I had a really dry scalp and it was feeling really inflamed and wanted to try something different and cut out shampoo and see what would happen. Interestingly when we went to a whole house water filtration system and went back to washing my hair, I didn’t have that issue anymore so I think the water was a big factor. I now only wash my hair every fortnight. When I did that experiment, I decided to post a video about it in the carpark at my local supermarket and ended up getting millions of views and lots of negative comments. So for my it was a really interesting learning experience as I was receiving all these hate comments but it was about my hair being gross and dirty and that negativity was feeding the algorithm. It helped me to get a thicker skin around sharing some of my more controversial beliefs because if I was going to receive that kind of hate around washing my hair, I built a thick skin. I realised really quickly how I could feed the algorithm and I got a lot of followers that didn’t resonate with me or my message and were posting on my psychology tips - still saying things like ‘she should wash her hair and I can sell the grease through my phone’ etc, so I ended up starting a new account after that because I wanted to start fresh and get my message to people I actually resonate with and people who cared about what I have to share.     

From a research perspective, how do you approach conversations around “toxins,” and what do you think people misunderstand about scientific evidence in this space?

From a research perspective, and in the focus of my PhD research, I’m much more focused on psychology and mental health, and now stepping more into mothers’ experiences, as well as research around hormonal impacts on mental health and child development, and how that mother-child dyad impacts how a child develops for their entire life. But I think something we really need to consider when we’re thinking about the science behind some of these approaches is that you can find evidence for anything, really. If someone has a particular claim or an ideology, or they believe that some things are safe or some things are not safe, whatever that might be, it’s very likely that they’re going to be able to find evidence for that. With so much research out there now, you can really find something to support your claims.

So reading general article summaries that someone else has interpreted for you is really not sufficient when it comes to truly understanding scientific evidence. I think a lot of people think that research is too difficult to understand, or they’d rather just receive that condensed version, which can be fine if you find a trusted source, someone you resonate with and understand where they’re coming from. But I would really encourage people to, where they can, actually be reading the journal articles behind the claims and think for themselves about whether that seems like valid research to them, and whether they agree with the conclusions that are drawn from the data. People can access these documents if they want to, and you can learn a lot more by reading them and developing your understanding in that way. At least then, you can decide whether or not you agree with the claims that are being made. 

How does your research explore the connection between a mother’s nervous system, her environment, and her child’s development?

Something I’m very focused on in my research now is looking at that mother-child dyad, and how we can use the mother’s nervous system, once she’s regulated, to co-regulate her child, and what kind of strategies we can use, both active strategies that regulate the nervous system, and then also removing those things from the environment, exposure, and consumption that can be dysregulation and overstimulation for both mum and for the baby and young child.

So this is the new direction I’m looking at. Our yoga intervention focused on giving autistic children the skills they needed to be able to recognise and regulate their emotions. Now I’m bringing it back more to looking at that co-regulation approach, and how we can better support mothers and their children. 

From your perspective, how does chronic stress and nervous system dysregulation influence fertility and the body’s capacity to conceive?

When it comes to our health and what we consume. I think a lot of the time we focus on what we consume and the tangible things that are around us, but we're not focusing enough on stress, emotions, and nervous system regulation. And if we think of this from a fertility perspective, if your body is in a dysregulated state, if you're spending your time in fight, flight or freeze, you're spending your time in an anxious state.

Anxiety is this perpetual feeling of fear. And fear is very important to us. It helps us to stay alive. We wouldn't exist without fear because it prevents us from doing things that would end our lives. It helps us to get that energy burst when we need to get away from a situation, and to have that adrenaline is very important. But if you're living in that state all the time, you're putting your body into chronic stress to then expect to be able to bring life into the world and to for your body to put resources into growing a human in a state of dysregulation and this elevated, sympathetic nervous system, you're not in rest and digest. Your parasympathetic nervous system is not dominant, and that's not an environment that fosters the conception and carrying of new life. So I think this is truly just as important as what we physically consume and expose ourselves to. The two really go hand in hand.

I've heard so many stories from women, that were just living in this really masculine energy, and were not able to conceive until they allowed themselves to take a step back and to soften into their femininity and to just be a little bit more slow. And this can be such hard advice in our current system, specifically within the current economic system, you know, and women are very career driven and need to focus on bringing in money as well, because that's the way of the world. But I do think when you're considering trying to have a baby, you really need to step back and look, if the way that you're living aligns with that and allows you to soften into motherhood.

In your view, how can birth experiences shape maternal mental health and the long-term wellbeing of both mother and child?

Natural birth, natural physiological birth, is such a beautiful showcase of human biology, or animal biology, and what occurs to support a woman through the most painful experience of her life, and to come out the other side of that feeling deep love and connection with the baby and when we interfere with that process through medical intervention, it can have deep, lasting impacts on a mother’s mental health and her ability to connect with her baby. We know that inductions are associated with around thirty percent higher chances of postpartum depression. That is just one example of how these kinds of interventions around birth can impact a mum, and that then obviously directly impacts her ability to connect with and raise her child and to provide emotional support, and to help shape them as well.

So how women give birth, and the support they receive around birth, is absolutely critical to that connection, the mother-child bond, and how that child develops. Unfortunately, modern birth has become very fear-based. So we’re putting women in this fear state when they really need to be feeling completely safe and supported, which is the opposite of what many women feel when they are going into birth.

A lot of women feel unsafe in hospital settings. My biggest thing is that the most important thing is making sure a mother feels supported and safe, whether that is at home or at hospital. That first step is critical, because she needs to feel safe.
 We see a lot of women going into labour naturally, quite often at night, when they are in that state. Then they go to hospital and their labour stalls. It stalls because all of a sudden they are no longer in that safe environment. They are in a hospital setting with people they don’t know, bright lights, loud noises, and other people who are experiencing pain. That puts the body into a fear state, which is not where you want to be for birth.

Then we see labour stall, and of course that can result in intervention. So it is that typical cascade of intervention, when really we need to first be looking at supporting a mother to feel safe in her birth. When trying to conceive, what role does cumulative exposure and lifestyle play, and how can women begin to shift their habits in a supportive way?

Unfortunately, when it comes to your fertility and trying to conceive a baby, this idea that a little bit of exposure will not do you any harm just really is not true. People do not want to hear that because we like our biases. We like being able to grab some chocolate or sit on our phones. Most people sit on their phone connected to Wi-Fi, holding it right over their ovaries or testicles, so they are directly exposing that area to the phone a lot of the time.

This kind of cumulative, ongoing exposure is not helpful or healthy for us. As I said, people do not want to hear it because it is hard to give these things up. People definitely can still conceive and still have all of those habits. People can conceive when they are partying every weekend, drinking alcohol, and eating terribly. I am not saying it is not possible. But if you are struggling to conceive and you are really serious about trying to have a baby, and trying to give that baby the best start in life possible from a genetic point of view, then any harmful exposure is harmful exposure.

This can be really challenging because - and I have definitely been there myself - when you get that negative test and you have had that negative test month after month after month for years on end, I have been there thinking, “Well, my test is negative. I may as well just have a glass of wine. I’m not pregnant anyway.” We can fall back into those patterns and rely on those things to help us deal with the emotional turmoil and the really deep pain that an infertility journey causes.

So really trying to give yourself different coping strategies, healthy coping strategies. You can fall in love with this different approach of honouring your body and giving it the best, giving yourself the best environment possible, is so important because that is going to help you physically and mentally to be better prepared for pregnancy when it does happen for you, and for motherhood when that happens for you and just being able to cope at least a little bit better without relying on things that ultimately are not serving you in your journey.  

Why is education and open conversation around women’s health, fertility, and the nervous system so important to you?? 

I think one of the most important things that we can be doing as women, both before pregnancy and as mothers, is to be talking about this stuff more and I think it’s so incredibly important that we have these conversations, and that we educate young women to truly understand their bodies and how conception actually works. How their hormones actually work, so that when they’re ready to try for a baby, they already know how to best care for their body. That they’ve been practising that for years and preparing themselves for conception, instead of blindly taking a contraceptive pill that’s given to them at fourteen and then ending up on that for a decade before they’re ready to have a baby. We need to be more responsible in the education we’re giving to women around how their bodies work, and the impacts of stress on their physical health and their mental health.

So to contribute to that body of knowledge is something I’m really passionate abou doing, so that we can better support women through all stages of their fertility journeys. A woman’s fertility health is her physical health. It is her mental health. And it’s so incredibly important that we have a better understanding of this from a general public knowledge perspective.